Skepticism

EVENTS

Brain dead

You know what, guys? I’m really worn out. Wednesdays I’ve just got back-to-back-to-back teaching — I talk and coax students into talking for about 3 hours straight — and I’m planning to vegetate for a while. Maybe a glass of wine and a really bad movie, and then early to bed.

You don’t need me for anything, do you? Just talk among yourselves, in your best Boris Karloff voices.

I empathize. At work we did a code release and I wasn’t 100% we were ready. I was right. There’s a few glitches whenever you do one of these, but there were more than I thought and worse than I thought. By the time the afternoon came around, I was mentally exhausted and frazzled. But it looks like things are done now. I am NOT a good tester for my own code. On the plus side I did get some progress made on other projects, some nice easy things that didn’t require much brain power. The boss is gone tomorrow and Friday the whole company is doing training while providing lunch and a reception afterward.

I flew to the other side of the world about a week ago, stayed just long enough to start to acclimatise to the new timezone and then flew back. I’m so brain dead that only the tasty, tasty cerebellums of others will sustain me…..

Owlmirror, okay. I haven’t checked in for a bit, but I also am set to receive posts to the group as they are posted, and the only recent emails have been from Lynna, Carlie and CD. I’ll go get on my regular ‘puter and check.

chigau: Why would I snark at Ichthyic? He is, as they say in the biz, “a wise guy, eh?”. He knows the answer to the riddle of the Season of Wabbits and the Season of Ducks, and understands the importance of Extreme Silence.

*hands blueprints for Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator to Ichthyhic, and several kinds of tasty cheese to chigau*

Vegetate happily. Here’s a lullaby for whoever may need it. And here’s another version, beautiful too, but with a bit too much vibrato for me and a tree which looks rather anaemic to give any shade; on the plus side, somebody seems made up as a zombie.

*erk*
More grading. My students are killing me. KILLING me. Burying fundamental and necessary principles behind ramparts of procedural details for the sole purpose of wearing my grinding molars to useless little nubs. What can they have against my teeth?
*must kill it with beer*

Well…if one wants a good movie to watch, there is Mission Congo though it’ll be at the Toronto Film Festival so you won’t be able to see it for a bit…but the topic is very interesting:

With Mission Congo, filmmakers David Turner and Lara Zizic conduct a deep investigation based on years of research into what Operation Blessing actually accomplished. They interview aid workers, eyewitnesses and even the pilots of Robertson’s airplanes who describe a different mission: diamonds. With the help of a brutal dictator and ex- Navy SEALS, Robertson was diverting his planes away from refugee camps to a different part of the Congo to extract precious gems. If the devil is in the details, here the details are jaw-dropping as we confront the disconnect between what Robertson promised and what others experienced.

Maybe some good will come of this movie:

The film raises larger questions over the billions of dollars raised by American religious institutions that go untaxed and unregulated. Robertson’s organization alone earns annual revenues in the hundreds of millions. If this story can bring about greater accountability, that would truly be a blessing.